Our History

This 2005 edition of San
Francisco Water and Power,
A History of the Municipal
Water Department and Hetch Hetchy
System celebrates the extraordinary
events and memorable leaders who
conceived, designed and built San
Francisco’s water system with foresight
to provide today’s Bay Area
with high quality drinking water
supplies. San Francisco’s water
system developed over time from
the streams and wells of its earliest
days to today’s complex system
of dams, reservoirs, tunnels and
pipelines that brings water from the
high Sierra Nevada by gravity across
California to join from the East Bay
and San Francisco Peninsula.